A record-setting wave of emigration from Israel continued in 2025, with nearly 50,000 Israelis leaving the country for more than 12 months for the third year in a row, according to a report published Monday by researchers at Tel Aviv University.

After about 49,000 Israelis left the country for more than a year in both 2023 and 2024, travel data from the Central Bureau of Statistics indicates the trend likely continued in 2025, Itai Ater, one of the report’s lead authors, told The Times of Israel.

The report argues that Israel’s prolonged military conflict and political tensions have contributed to elevated emigration that could threaten the country’s long-term strategic interests.

Opposition politicians said the report was a sign of the failures of the current government.

The research was conducted by Ater, of the Coller School of Management and head of the Economists’ Forum for Democracy; Nittai Bergman, head of the School of Economics; and doctoral candidate Doron Zamir.

While the CBS published emigration estimates for 2025 in December, its methodology counts people as emigrants only after they have spent most of a year abroad. As a result, many people included in the 2025 figures actually left Israel in 2024.

Official data for 2025 won’t be available until the beginning of 2027, the report noted.

In order to extract the 2025 trends before that, the TAU researchers analyzed CBS data for three-month departure periods. The researchers found that the number of Israelis spending at least three months abroad closely tracked the number who ultimately remained away for at least a year, with a statistical correlation of 0.96. They used that relationship to estimate 2025 emigration before official figures become available.

In 2025, 90,922 Israelis remained abroad for at least three consecutive months, compared with 91,499 in 2024 and 86,509 in 2023. In total, 268,509 Israeli citizens departed the country for trips lasting at least three months between 2023 and 2025.

For comparison, annual departures averaged roughly 60,000 per year throughout the decade........

© The Times of Israel